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Zothecula writes with this excerpt from Gizmag: "For almost as long as we've had computers, humans have been trying to make ones that play chess. The most famous chess-playing computer of course is IBM's Deep Blue, which in 1997 defeated the then World Champion Garry Kasparov. But as powerful as Deep Blue was, it didn't actually move the chess pieces on its own. Perhaps that's a trivial task in comparison to beating the best chess player of all time, but it's still exciting to discover this recent video of a chess robot that more closely fits the true definition of a chess automaton." My favorite part: "Note that around the 2:45 mark Kramnik extends his hand offering a draw, but the robot – since it's not fitted with any kind of optical device – just keeps playing, very nearly taking off Kramnik's hand in the process!"

Kramnik decided to try and confuse the robot by putting a pawn between two squares, which seemed to work (the robot did nothing). He then fixed the location of the pawn and reset the timer. When the robot still didn't respond after a few seconds, he reached out to touch it and it started playing again.

Yeah, it was obvious he was primarily interested in the mechanics of how the robot arm interacted with the board and pieces, as opposed to seriously competing against the controlling computer's logic. He sacrificed a number of pieces to trivial captures by the computer's pawns for no reason at all.

I also thought the arm was moving unnecessarily fast, especially considering it apparently doesn't have any avoidance sensors.

When Garry played Deep Blue, it was understood that no parameters of the machine would be changed during game play. That turned out not to be the case, as the IBM programmers were tweaking things behind the scenes.

Had Garry known this, he might have played differently, not expecting the machine to make new/different moves than it had previously made, etc.

When Garry played Deep Blue, it was understood that no parameters of the machine would be changed during game play. That turned out not to be the case, as the IBM programmers were tweaking things behind the scenes.

While it would certainly be more impressive for Deep Blue to beat Gasparov unaided, it's still pretty impressive to beat him even with the aid of a programmer, unless that programmer happens to be a chess champion himself:).

Had Garry known this, he might have played differently, not expecting th

"In between games" that constituted the six game 1997 match, with the ultimate winning of the match deciding which party will be called victor.

The match rules allowed for this, so we can't say Garry didn't know. That said, they did diddle with the machine during the match, which has always made the claim of victory hollow to me. It lowered the bar. That it was a lowering which Garry agreed to, doesn't matter.

When Garry played Deep Blue, it was understood that no parameters of the machine would be changed during game play. That turned out not to be the case, as the IBM programmers were tweaking things behind the scenes.

Had Garry known this, he might have played differently, not expecting the machine to make new/different moves than it had previously made, etc.

Robot playing chess is one thing, but what will happen if you cannot make it stop playing games. We wouldnt want any more chess moves. Rules of chess need to be only slightly wrong and it keeps playing infinitely.

It must be annoying to have devoted a big part of your life to playing chess, only to have someone say "Well, we built this robot who can kick your ass in five minutes." I think when robots are better at my job than I could be, I would start to question the meaning of my life. Its worthy of an Ishiguro novel, or I guess, under the circumstances, a Dostoevsky.

The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind. Why should economics stand in the way of a utopia where we have more leisure time to solve unsolved problems? Govt can create money (like banks do), but since govt is mandated to help its citizens govt can give it to ppl debt-free so that we can work on creating robots to automate the jobs we don't want to do!

I think when robots are better at my job than I could be, I would start to question the meaning of my life.

If so, you should have questioned your life's meaning a long time ago. I think people impart far too much importance to things they can do.

Tonight, go outside and look up at the beautiful starry sky and contemplate the size of the Universe. Then, consider the fact: We are only important to ourselves; This entire planet could disappear right now and it would not matter significantly to the rest of the Universe, save one lonely Jedi on Tatooine.

Tonight, go outside and look up at the beautiful starry sky and contemplate the size of the Universe. Then, consider the fact: We are only important to ourselves; This entire planet could disappear right now...

I can one-up this: Each and every individual is only important to themselves. Everyone is out for number 1. Oh, you think that people care about you, that they worry about you, etc... But that is not actually the case. They care about the relationship that they have with you. If you blink out of their world, it is their relationship with you that blinks out with it.. and that is the part they are concerned about. Not the actual YOU. One of the greatest ironies of our society is that everyone is out for numb

If everyone is ultimately only concerned about themselves how do you explain concern and worry for a complete stranger? Take the massive outpouring of sympathy and help for people hurt by natural disasters. Most people donating their time and money have no connection whatsoever with the people they are helping yet they still feel concern.

I think when robots are better at my job than I could be, I would start to question the meaning of my life.

In the 1980s, there was an article in Chess Life: "Computer Chess - It's Getting Serious". This was when computers started playing chess well enough that grandmasters had to take them seriously. One strong player wrote "I'm starting to feel like John Henry against the steam hammer" [wikipedia.org]. Now it's happened. Any good desktop machine can be loaded up with software that plays at world champion level [rybkachess.com] for about $125. (If you haven't been on the cover of Chess Life, a laptop will be enough to trounce you.) People are still playing chess.

Work, though, is another matter. What's happening is the hollowing out of the middle class. There are more crap jobs that pay minimum wage, but fewer ones that pay more. Manufacturing used to pay well; now it pays slightly above minimum wage, if that. That's because the machines are doing the thinking. The workers are just robot hands with minimal skills.

Here's a very clear example of that - The Kiva robotic order fulfillment system. [youtube.com] Watch that video. Hundreds of cooperating mobile robots. All the thinking and planning is done by the computers. The workers just take things out of one tray and put them in a box. The computers even control a laser pointer to point to the object they're supposed to pick. Then a bar-code scanner checks that they did it right. "Requires little or no operator training". Zero opportunity for advancement.

Wow! In the past, the human made the decisions and the robot was just a dumb tool, repeating movements ad nauseam. In the future, the robot makes the decisions and the human is just a dumb tool, repeating movements ad nauseam.

Well, there are limited options on a chess game. You just have 64 positions and 32 pieces, there's a limited number of plays. That makes easy for a computer to beat humans. The game is nearly deterministic, no randomness as in poker.

Creativity is what makes the difference. If you watched the video, I think the most interesting part was when he moved a pawn halfway, that's when the robot got somewhat stuck and almost went for his hand. Chess is a basic imitation of war games, but in real life, there's not

Well, there are limited options on a chess game. You just have 64 positions and 32 pieces, there's a limited number of plays. That makes easy for a computer to beat humans. The game is nearly deterministic, no randomness as in poker.

Just because there is a limited number of options because of rules on movement etcetera, that doesn't mean that this limited number of plays isn't a bloody huge number beyond the capacity of most computers. Imagine the starting position of a chess game: white has 20 moves, and black has the same 20 moves. That is already 400 combinations, after only 1 move. In the next move, there are a few more options because a bishop can escape, say 25 options, same for black. That's a quarter of a million possibilities

Is anyone else getting re-directed to Epoclick.com after clicking the link in this story?

A few days ago, sometimes when I click on a link, I get sent to Epoclick.com in a popup window. This has only been happening with Slashdot and links going to gizmodo or gizmag and only on this laptop. I can't figure out which website is to blame, or if maybe I have a virus or malicious javascript code running.

It was a drawn position, with the computer starting to shuffle the bishop back and forth. No point playing on. It did pretty well to hold Kramnik to a draw playing almost instantaneously.. engines usually play sub par moves at those kinds of speeds in my experience.. well it would still kick my ass, but this is Kramnik he's playing. Kramniks a machine himself.
Also worth noting is i think Kramnik made a joke after he tried to trade off queens and the machine refused it. Kramnik is notorious for playing awe

In fact, just finding and moving chess pieces around with a robot is orders of magnitude harder than playing the game of chess. We humans are just adapted towards these kinds of things (moving around in a 3D environment and manipulating objects) that it comes very easy to us, and we don't view it as a "hard" problem -- so when we see a game like chess, we think it is "hard" because we don't do it automatically. For a computer, which is well adapted for crunching numbers and doing logic, chess comes very nat

Yawn. This robot has nothing on the competitors at this year's AAAI robotic chess competition. Check out a video of them here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ0Hx04KFCg [youtube.com]. The main difference is that the robot featured in this post uses an instrumented chess board while those at the AAAI competition had to use computer vision and work with a variety of off-the-shelf chess pieces and board.

The first robot shown actually has the same RGB-D sensor that the Microsoft Kinect has and it won't move if there's a han